A sharp disagreement broke out during a Thursday meeting of the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet, during which Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blasted IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi. "You don't want me to say who over here was asleep on October 6th," Smotrich slammed. Halevi responded: "Take it back." Defense Minister Yoav Gallant came to Halevi's defense, saying, "I am not willing for ministers to attack the IDF. There has never been such a thing in the history of the State." Related articles: Senior police officer saves hundreds of partygoers IDF arrived 7 hours after terrorists infiltrated Kibbutz Nirim The scope of failures at the Nova massacre is revealed The moment Matan Angrest was kidnapped from his tank on 10/7 Since the beginning of the war, damning evidence has come out showing that the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel could have been prevented - had the IDF acted differently. In February , Kan News reported that dozens of Israeli SIM cards had been activated before the Hamas invasion reached the commander of the IDF Southern Command in the last hours of October 6th. The first telephone call about the report took place between the Southern Command intelligence commander and Yaron Finkelman, the general commander, a few hours before midnight. The call was based on information and evidence from the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) regarding the SIM cards being activated. During one consultation held on October 6, it was decided to hold an additional consultation in the morning, and that no forces would be sent to the area and the forces present would not be placed on higher alert. Earlier this month , Channel 12 News reported that on the night of October 6, a fault occurred in a technological system used by the elite SIGINT force Unit 8200, which is supposed to provide significantly better information than was intercepted before the October 7th massacre. The Channel 12 News report noted that upon identifying the fault, soldiers specializing in handling it were urgently called from home. A senior military intelligence official claims they were called immediately, while another intelligence source claimed they arrived only after 3:00. They managed to restore the system to operation at 5:00, an hour and a half before the attack began. By the time it resumed extracting real-time information and reconstructing previous data, the attack had already started. Related articles: Terrorist who kidnapped Bibas family eliminated in Gaza Hamas key terror financing facilitator eliminated in Gaza Palestinian Authority: IDF takeover of Morag Corridor 'criminal' Gaza: IDF forces eliminate terrorists, destroy rocket launchers Another report , this one by Kan News , said that just four days before October 7th, a lookout at the Nahal Oz military installation identified a terrorist training exercise near the Gaza border. According to the report, the exercise included approximately 170 who practiced launching rockets while attacking IDF tanks. The exercise was identified at 9:00 a.m., and the lookout reported it properly to her superiors. According to security sources, although the exercise was extensive and unusual, it was described as "just any other exercise that was carried out in the Gaza Strip in the past." The scenarios that were practiced during the exercise were implemented almost exactly on October 7th, both the rocket launches and the attacks on the tanks. Kan also reported that intelligence documents in the possession of the Gaza Division and the Intelligence Corps showed the plans for the October 7th massacre in minute detail, and were distributed less than three weeks before the invasion. Security officials added that the document was known to the top intelligence echelon, and at the very least to the Gaza Division. The document, under the title "End-to-end detailed raid training", describes in detail a series of exercises carried out by Hamas elite units in which they practiced raiding military posts and kibbutzim, kidnapping soldiers and civilians, and even instructions on how to hold and guard the hostages once they were already in Gaza. According to the document, the first step in the exercise is to create breaches in a dummy IDF post built in Gaza that simulates the posts in the Gaza border area. The exercise was carried out by four companies and each company received a different post. According to the report, Southern Command and Gaza Division intelligence were not only aware of Hamas' kidnapping plan but also the conditions for holding the hostages, including instructions in the document to the kidnappers on how to handle extreme cases, how to hold the hostages, and under what conditions they could be executed. The assessment that Hamas' plan was to kidnap between 200 and 250 soldiers and civilians, including women and children, was completely ignored.
